Obama's Sons: They Are Real for Him

Much has been said, here at American Thinker and elsewhere, about Barack Obama's recent pair of teleprompted references to his (presumably) non-existent sons. Thomas Lifson toys with the notion that Obama might in fact have secret sons, as a way of making sense of the seeming insanity of it. Selwyn Duke suggests it might indicate brain damage from Obama's (presumably) past drug use. (Funny, isn't it, how often one is left no choice but merely to presume about the Cipher-in-Chief.) David Paulin asks whether Obama might be the victim of a teleprompting prankster/saboteur.

All of these are reasonable speculations -- which is, in itself, reason to be perturbed about America's current devolved state. However, I would like to throw one more possibility into the mix, more straightforward, but no less bizarre, than the others. I believe it is likely that Obama compared the future prospects of "my daughters" to that of "my sons" precisely according to a sincerely prepared and carefully vetted script.

Watching the two instances on video, it is clear that he does not blink in either case, suggesting that he doesn't think he is making an error. True, he didn't blink when he heard himself talking about 57 states, either. But of course that one could plausibly be chalked up to genuine ignorance. After all, why should a 47 year-old man, serving as one of the 100 elected members of a body comprised of exactly 2 people from each U.S. state, himself famously (and presumably) born in the 50th state, and running for President, necessarily know how many states there are?

Arguing, as Selwyn Duke does, that every American school child, "when very little," knows there are 50 states, misses the point, in as much as Obama was not an American school child when he was very little. When he was very little, he was (presumably) studying in Indonesia, where his homework on American history was, presumably, very little. Thus, Duke's point that Obama ought to have known how many states there are by the time he ran for President is the height of unfairness. And we all know how Obama feels about unfairness. (Which reminds me of another possible explanation for offering imaginary sons to match his real daughters: equality, as in familial justice, a "fair" distribution of genders in the Obama home.)

To display a similar level of ignorance about the composition of one's own immediate family, however -- and to do it in exactly the same way, in exactly the same context, on two different occasions -- now we're into the realm of the supernaturally strange. This is why I doubt it was a mistake.

So what to make of it? Here is the text of one of the two almost identical references:

I want women to control their own health choices, just like I want my daughters to have the same economic opportunities as my sons -- we're not turning back the clock.

He wants his daughters to have the same economic opportunities as his sons. He wants to be born in Kenya when it's more advantageous than being born in Hawaii. He wants to give detailed intimate descriptions of composite girlfriends who never actually existed in concrete reality. He wants to be a Harvard intellectual among middle class voters, and a cokehead seeker of his African identity among black voters and anti-American leftists.

And if he wants all these contradictory things, why can't he have them? After all, he is (presumably) Barack Hussein Obama. In what sense, then, to get down to brass tacks, does he think he has sons to match his daughters? In the same way, and for roughly the same reason, I suspect, that he thought it was perfectly okay to have an imaginary birthplace to match his real one: he is a megalomaniac, in the literal, clinical sense.

He is not a liar, or not simply a liar. He envisions himself as more than a man. Not a god, exactly, but a kind of ethereal, roving force -- a collective (or collectivist) energy enveloping the world.

The historical "majestic plural," colloquially known as "the royal we," is the manner whereby those perceived as ruling by divine dispensation refer to themselves. When such a man -- a king, for example, says "we," he represents himself as the symbol of his entire kingdom, all things together in one person. Obama turns this around. When he says "I," he seems to be trying to portray the world -- or at least the world of desirable possibilities -- as a mere symbol of himself.

Think of his supra-Gore campaign promises to lower the waters, speed up the planets, pay your mortgage, and so on. Could any normal man, or even any politician, speak of himself this way? Yes, of course, someone else wrote those words for him, just as someone else likely wrote the script about "my sons." But they wrote what they thought their mouthpiece could say -- what he would say. And, sure enough, he willingly said it.

Perhaps, in seeking the explanation for this inexplicable "gaffe," we have all been focusing on the wrong words. Perhaps the relevant question is not what he meant when he spoke of "my sons," but rather what he meant when he spoke of "my daughters." Given that he has no actual sons, but that he mentioned them anyway, why should we presume that he was talking about his actual, biological "daughters" when he used that word?

On the contrary, isn't it more likely that he meant both "sons" and "daughters" in the same sense that he meant "Kenya" in that literary biography; in the same sense that he meant "my Muslim faith," when George Stephanopoulos was forced to cover for him embarrassedly; in the same sense that he meant Bill Ayers was merely "a guy in my neighborhood"; and in the same sense that he means the myriad other mind-bogglingly peculiar things he is wont to say.

In short, isn't it likely that he meant no sons or daughters in particular, but all sons and daughters in general? Isn't it likely that where you or I, speaking of society as a whole, would say "our daughters" and "our sons," Obama the Great, through his megalomaniacal reversal of the royal "we," speaks of "my daughters" and "my sons"?

He is not "all of us," in monarchical fashion. Rather, we (by which I mean all things in the known universe) are all him. Thus, he can legitimately lay claim to having sons, for all fathers are Obama. He can refer to himself as both Muslim and Christian, for all faiths are Obama. Composite girlfriends can be discussed in detail in a supposed work of non-fiction, for his romantic past includes the infinite list of all possible girlfriends, as all boyfriends are Obama.

He is the world spirit and the end of history. When Hegel said it, people thought, and still think, he was a madman. But Hegel, at least, was a great intellect. His defense against such critique was, in effect, "According to my reasoning, someone must embody the end of history, so why not me?" And dang it all if he didn't have a point.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is an intellectual, moral, and historical lightweight, a manufactured man of significant accomplishments on paper which somehow don't match up with anything one can point to in reality. If his delusional understanding of his relationship to the world were true, and we were all him, the world would be in a heap of trouble.

Come to think of it....

Much has been said, here at American Thinker and elsewhere, about Barack Obama's recent pair of teleprompted references to his (presumably) non-existent sons.

Thomas Lifson toys with the notion that Obama might in fact have secret sons, as a way of making sense of the seeming insanity of it. Selwyn Duke suggests it might indicate brain damage from Obama's (presumably) past drug use. (Funny, isn't it, how often one is left no choice but merely to presume about the Cipher-in-Chief.) David Paulin asks whether Obama might be the victim of a teleprompting prankster/saboteur.

All of these are reasonable speculations -- which is, in itself, reason to be perturbed about America's current devolved state. However, I would like to throw one more possibility into the mix, more straightforward, but no less bizarre, than the others. I believe it is likely that Obama compared the future prospects of "my daughters" to that of "my sons" precisely according to a sincerely prepared and carefully vetted script.

Watching the two instances on video, it is clear that he does not blink in either case, suggesting that he doesn't think he is making an error. True, he didn't blink when he heard himself talking about 57 states, either. But of course that one could plausibly be chalked up to genuine ignorance. After all, why should a 47 year-old man, serving as one of the 100 elected members of a body comprised of exactly 2 people from each U.S. state, himself famously (and presumably) born in the 50th state, and running for President, necessarily know how many states there are?

Arguing, as Selwyn Duke does, that every American school child, "when very little," knows there are 50 states, misses the point, in as much as Obama was not an American school child when he was very little. When he was very little, he was (presumably) studying in Indonesia, where his homework on American history was, presumably, very little. Thus, Duke's point that Obama ought to have known how many states there are by the time he ran for President is the height of unfairness. And we all know how Obama feels about unfairness. (Which reminds me of another possible explanation for offering imaginary sons to match his real daughters: equality, as in familial justice, a "fair" distribution of genders in the Obama home.)

To display a similar level of ignorance about the composition of one's own immediate family, however -- and to do it in exactly the same way, in exactly the same context, on two different occasions -- now we're into the realm of the supernaturally strange. This is why I doubt it was a mistake.

So what to make of it? Here is the text of one of the two almost identical references:

I want women to control their own health choices, just like I want my daughters to have the same economic opportunities as my sons -- we're not turning back the clock.

He wants his daughters to have the same economic opportunities as his sons. He wants to be born in Kenya when it's more advantageous than being born in Hawaii. He wants to give detailed intimate descriptions of composite girlfriends who never actually existed in concrete reality. He wants to be a Harvard intellectual among middle class voters, and a cokehead seeker of his African identity among black voters and anti-American leftists.

And if he wants all these contradictory things, why can't he have them? After all, he is (presumably) Barack Hussein Obama. In what sense, then, to get down to brass tacks, does he think he has sons to match his daughters? In the same way, and for roughly the same reason, I suspect, that he thought it was perfectly okay to have an imaginary birthplace to match his real one: he is a megalomaniac, in the literal, clinical sense.

He is not a liar, or not simply a liar. He envisions himself as more than a man. Not a god, exactly, but a kind of ethereal, roving force -- a collective (or collectivist) energy enveloping the world.

The historical "majestic plural," colloquially known as "the royal we," is the manner whereby those perceived as ruling by divine dispensation refer to themselves. When such a man -- a king, for example, says "we," he represents himself as the symbol of his entire kingdom, all things together in one person. Obama turns this around. When he says "I," he seems to be trying to portray the world -- or at least the world of desirable possibilities -- as a mere symbol of himself.

Think of his supra-Gore campaign promises to lower the waters, speed up the planets, pay your mortgage, and so on. Could any normal man, or even any politician, speak of himself this way? Yes, of course, someone else wrote those words for him, just as someone else likely wrote the script about "my sons." But they wrote what they thought their mouthpiece could say -- what he would say. And, sure enough, he willingly said it.

Perhaps, in seeking the explanation for this inexplicable "gaffe," we have all been focusing on the wrong words. Perhaps the relevant question is not what he meant when he spoke of "my sons," but rather what he meant when he spoke of "my daughters." Given that he has no actual sons, but that he mentioned them anyway, why should we presume that he was talking about his actual, biological "daughters" when he used that word?

On the contrary, isn't it more likely that he meant both "sons" and "daughters" in the same sense that he meant "Kenya" in that literary biography; in the same sense that he meant "my Muslim faith," when George Stephanopoulos was forced to cover for him embarrassedly; in the same sense that he meant Bill Ayers was merely "a guy in my neighborhood"; and in the same sense that he means the myriad other mind-bogglingly peculiar things he is wont to say.

In short, isn't it likely that he meant no sons or daughters in particular, but all sons and daughters in general? Isn't it likely that where you or I, speaking of society as a whole, would say "our daughters" and "our sons," Obama the Great, through his megalomaniacal reversal of the royal "we," speaks of "my daughters" and "my sons"?

He is not "all of us," in monarchical fashion. Rather, we (by which I mean all things in the known universe) are all him. Thus, he can legitimately lay claim to having sons, for all fathers are Obama. He can refer to himself as both Muslim and Christian, for all faiths are Obama. Composite girlfriends can be discussed in detail in a supposed work of non-fiction, for his romantic past includes the infinite list of all possible girlfriends, as all boyfriends are Obama.

He is the world spirit and the end of history. When Hegel said it, people thought, and still think, he was a madman. But Hegel, at least, was a great intellect. His defense against such critique was, in effect, "According to my reasoning, someone must embody the end of history, so why not me?" And dang it all if he didn't have a point.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is an intellectual, moral, and historical lightweight, a manufactured man of significant accomplishments on paper which somehow don't match up with anything one can point to in reality. If his delusional understanding of his relationship to the world were true, and we were all him, the world would be in a heap of trouble.